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A serial killer's DNA on a murder victim later freed the man wrongfully convicted in the case, Chaunte Ott. Now a man who says he testified falsely against Ott and pleaded to a crime he didn't commit, wants his conviction cleared, too.

A serial killer's DNA on a murder victim later freed the man wrongfully convicted in the case, Chaunte Ott. Now a man who says he testified falsely against Ott and pleaded to a crime he didn't commit, wants his conviction cleared too.
Wochit

Chaunte Ott hugs his sister Tami Ott in front of the Hitching Post Restaurant in Poratge after he was released from Columbia Correctional Institution on Jan. 8, 2009.(Photo: Journal Sentinel files)

After 13 years in prison for a rape and murder he had always denied, Chaunte Ott was released in 2009, when DNA linked the victim to Milwaukee serial killer Walter Ellis.

The state Claims Board concluded Ott was innocent and paid him $25,000. In 2015, the City of Milwaukee paid Ott $6.5 million to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit claiming that Milwaukee police detectives pressured witnesses into testifying falsely that they had been with Ott during the murder of Jessica Payne, a 16-year-old runaway.

One of those witnesses was Sammy Hadaway. Now he'd like to get his own conviction related to the case thrown out, but there's just one problem — prosecutors still think he, and Ott, are guilty.

With the help of the Innocence Project, the same organization that won Ott's freedom, Hadaway, 42, has asked the Milwaukee County Circuit Court to vacate his conviction. Even though he's already served the five-year prison term that resulted from his plea to armed robbery and testimony against Ott, he "continues to suffer stigma and harm because this wrongful conviction stains his record."

Payne ran away from home shortly before she would have started her junior year at South Milwaukee High School. On Aug. 30, 1995, her body was found behind a vacant home at N. 7th and W. Chambers streets.

A month later, Richard Gwin told police he had driven Payne, Ott and Hadaway to an abandoned building, where he saw the three get out of the car and go behind the building. Hadaway and Ott returned to the car and told Gwin that Ott had killed Payne during an attempted robbery, according to court records.

At the time of the Payne investigation, Hadaway was 17, with severe cognitive and intellectual disabilities. According to his petition, Hadaway falsely confessed after days of interrogation, adopting some details he heard from detectives.

With that, police arrested Ott, who always denied involvement but was convicted solely on testimony from Hadaway and Gwin, who was murdered in 1997. Both men later recanted their testimony, and no physical evidence linked Ott to the Payne crime scene.

Hadaway's attorney, Steven Wright, repeatedly states in his pleading that Ellis killed Payne, a fact that was unknown to the court that accepted Hadaway's guilty plea, and that makes a "writ of coram nobis," appropriate. The writ, recognized in 13 states, gives a court a way to rectify fundamental errors when other legal remedies are unavailable.

But Assistant District Attorney Paul Tiffin, the current head of the Milwaukee homicide unit, opposes the writ. He argues that merely because Ellis' DNA was found on Payne's body does not mean he killed her.

When the DNA persuaded the Court of Appeals to grant Ott a new trial, prosecutors never conceded that Ellis' DNA exonerated Ott. In the end, they decided not to retry Ott because of insufficient evidence in the old case but never did charge Ellis with killing Payne.

As Tiffin points out, all of Ellis' known victims were black women who died from strangulation, whereas Payne was white and her throat had been slit. He suggests The first two were in October 1986, the last in April 2007. Ellis' DNA could easily have been present from having sex with Payne for money before she was killed.

Walter E. Ellis, a serial killer who terrorized Milwaukee's north side, was linked to the 1998 strangulation of Maryetta Griffin.(Photo: Journal Sentinel files)

In 2011, Ellis pleaded no contest to charges that he killed seven women in Milwaukee over 21 years. He died in prison in 2013.

Tiffin cites a case from 1923 that warns against granting the writ in cases where someone has testified falsely. Otherwise, the Supreme Court ruled then, any case could later be attacked — without a statute of limitation — on the grounds someone committed perjury during trial.

Hadaway either told the truth when he pleaded guilty to robbery and testified against Ott, Tiffin said, or he committed perjury. "In either case, the requested writ should not be granted," he wrote.

Circuit Judge Joseph Donald has not yet scheduled a hearing or decision date on Hadaway's petition.